Hello & Welcome

Hello! And thanks for taking the time to look at this Blog. Since this is the first blog on this site I thought I could give you a flavour of what I intend to post here. This is going to be about Shamanism, Shamanic healing and my own personal experiences as a practitioner and client.

As I have said elsewhere on this website, Shamanism is about deep spiritual connection with the natural world, which I have been drawn to all my life. I left the Church of Scotland at the age of 10 because I couldn’t find God in a building. The fact that it enraged my mother was an added bonus.

I left school at 17 to study Ecology with specialism in Botany and Forestry, and worked for 10 years in woodland and estate management. This was not enough, though, and I knew I needed to find a path that addressed my own depression/anxiety spells. I went back to University to study psychology and counselling, which opened up the world of therapy which I have inhabited ever since.

Buddhism, meditation and spiritual healing followed and I very nearly devoted my life entirely to this path, that is until I met a man I truly loved, and I am with him still.

Pete, my partner, is an acupuncturist and healer. We work both individually and collaboratively with clients and it was travelling with him in the USA that I finally found my shamanic home. We went to take part in El Silencio, a Zero Balancing workshop in the Anza Borrego desert, California. As soon as I arrived I started to have what I now know were shamanic experiences. The Native Americans who had lived in the area around Borrego Springs were making their presence known to me in my dreams and in waking awarenesses. We travelled to Sedona, Monument Valley, visited the Hopi and Navajo, and spent several days trekking down into the Grand Canyon. Wherever we went we had life-changing encounters with Native Americans of many tribes, in this real world, and in the spirit world too.

When we returned to the UK we sold our respective houses and bought our current home in Cumbria. I attended an Introduction to Shamanism day with Paul Francis (see www.Therapeutic-Shamanism.co.uk) and I knew that I had finally found what I was looking for. Shamanic Psychotherapy combines deep psychological processes with connection to power animals, guides and allies who have ancient wisdom and knowledge I cannot access any other way. I have found my ancestral kin, been accepted into my spiritual tribe and become deeply embedded in the world of shamanic healing.